Both wireless microphones with transmitters and wireless receivers with speakers are well known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,815,143 to Derhaag, et al. discloses a wireless microphone and U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,641 to Abe, et al. discloses a wireless receiver. The disadvantage with both these systems is that they both apparently involve only one way communication. With either system alone, a user cannot transmit and receive wireless communications.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,661,659 to Nishimura discloses a wireless phone system communicatively combined with a computer. The system uses a wireless phone receiver connected to a master phone unit which both have a central processing unit. Disadvantageously, crosstalk may occur between the transmitted and received audio because the wireless phone system in Nishimura does not transmit and receive the wireless audio on different radio frequencies. This is not desirable if the user wants to talk to a computer and listen to computer generated audio. The Nishimura apparatus further does not use a sound card with the computer to facilitate the computer generation of speech from text or computer speech recognition.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,671,158 to Fournier et al. discloses an apparatus for effecting wireless communications and video information between a computer and a technician for testing motor vehicle emission control systems. A motor vehicle technician can transmit wireless audio to a computer which can transmit wireless video and audio to the technician. The computer provides speech recognition and generates audio speech from text using a commercial sound card. The disadvantage with the Fournier apparatus is that both audio and video are simultaneously transmitted to the user. The user may desire only to transmit and receive wireless audio. If only audio is desired, a video visor affixed to the user interface of the Fournier device may undesirably obstruct the field of view of the user. Furthermore, the video interface makes the apparatus more expensive. Finally, the Fournier apparatus does not transmit and receive wireless audio communications on different radio frequencies.
What is desired, therefore, is a wireless headset that transmits and receives audio on different frequencies, wherein a user transmits voice signals through a sound card to a computer using voice recognition and the user receives audio from the computer which generates speech from text.